Filmmaking #3 - “THE SECRET LIFE OF AN ORCHESTRA”

In 1975, to further explore the relationship between orchestra and conductor, I assembled a crew to film a rehearsal of Wagner’s “Prelude to Die Meistersinger.” Brian Priestman, the Music Director of the Denver Symphony Orchestra, conducted. The Prelude is a bright, one-movement work, full of open harmonies and grand climaxes. It was perfect for Priestman, a large, balding, red-bearded Englishman in his mid-forties, with a hearty conducting style. 

I had been leading children's concerts for the Baltimore Symphony several years earlier, when Priestman arrived as a guest conductor. We became friends, and when he was appointed Music Director in Denver, he took me along as his Associate Conductor.

An Associate Conductor has many responsibilities. I attended all rehearsals and had to be ready to take over in case the Music Director or a guest conductor became ill. (This never happened.) In addition, I was given a pair of regular subscription concerts to conduct each of the five seasons I was there. Those were wonderful opportunities. I conducted major works by Mahler, Beethoven, Bartók, Debussy, and Stravinsky.

I was also in charge of an education program that consisted of thirty or more school concerts a season. These usually took place in school auditoriums at 8 or 9 o'clock in the morning. The musicians did not like these concerts, especially if there had been an evening performance the night before. To help keep the students and teachers -- and the orchestra -- awake, I told stories about the pieces and the composers. Occasionally I chose students to come to the podium and conduct a Sousa march. I would start them off at the right tempo, but they were so excited that they would start waving the baton faster and faster. The orchestra stayed right with them, in perfect ensemble. If the student conductors realized their mistake and slowed down, the orchestra, too, got gradually slower and slower, like a phonograph losing power. The players followed the wayward young student perfectly - faster, slower, slower, suddenly faster, faster. It was hilarious. The audience loved it. It was also instructive for me to see how responsive the orchestra could be.

As a special treat, two or three times a year the student concerts were performed in the orchestra's main concert hall. The buses that delivered some twelve hundred children to each of these concerts were invariably late; the kids were still filing in noisily after the music had started. The teachers contributed to the chaotic atmosphere by walking up and down the aisles, demanding in full-throated stage whispers that the kids quiet down. The orchestra resented having to play under these conditions. I made several appeals to the school administration, and the buses began to arrive on schedule. The first time the auditorium was completely quiet when I walked on stage, the orchestra stood up as a gesture of thanks.

Then there were the Pop Concerts. Here my job was to accompany established luminaries in arrangements that made little or no use of the symphonic forces available. We used to call these concerts “white-note concerts,” because an entire string section would play nothing but long-held whole notes in a kind of hymn-like background while the soloist was pouring his heart out. Among others stars, I accompanied Dave Brubeck, who in fact had written some interesting orchestra pieces to accompany his jazz group, and Phyllis Diller, who sang a little, but mostly joked about life with her husband Fang. I also conducted a complete performance of “Jesus Christ Superstar” in the Denver Nuggets professional basketball arena. That was fun! 

Though the Pop Concerts generally sold out, they didn't accomplish the goal, which was to build audiences for the Denver Symphony. They did, however, help the management identify new potential donors for the orchestra's fund-raising drives. 

A word about the title -- Associate Conductor. If you are not the Music Director of an orchestra, you are not in charge, whatever they call you. Consequently the players feel free to take advantage of your subordinate status. When I was on the podium the players did not always play their best. They were masters at communicating a mild air of condescension, smiling to each other at some of my requests, as if to say, “Does he really want that?” If I asked for something a little louder, they would blast it out and look at me blankly. More than once, with five or ten minutes still left in the rehearsal, they stood up at the end of a piece, assuming that I would let them go early. They would groan good naturedly when I asked them to sit down and finish the rehearsal. Sometimes, to score points with them, I did end the rehearsal early. 

From time to time, Brian would attend my rehearsals, and I couldn't help noticing that his presence had a marked effect on the musicians’ behavior. We always accomplished a great deal when he was there.

In retrospect I believe the orchestra's behavior was not entirely directed at me. It was also a way to release the players' pent-up resistance to the authority of the Music Director. And I always knew that in spite of these tensions, the orchestra would play well in our concerts together - if not for my sake, then at least for their own professional self-respect.

One result of my subordinate position was that I learned more about the inner workings of the Denver Symphony than the Manager, or the board members, or even the Music Director himself would ever hear about. By attending all the rehearsals, hanging around during breaks, riding the bus with the players on tours, I heard the musicians speaking freely about things they liked and didn’t like. They would openly talk to me about the conductor, the schedule, the repertoire, the union rules, their favorite board members, and quite often about each other. I was one of a very few to hear about a management plot to get rid of a player, or a new love affair in the orchestra. With a number of the players, I formed real friendships, and was invited to dinners and holiday parties at their homes. For me, these insights and friendships - and of course the chance to conduct great music – helped make up for the difficulties that go with the job of Associate Conductor.

* * * * *

Though the silent communication between conductor and orchestra will always remain a mystery, some of it becomes clear during a rehearsal. After all, during a concert the conductor communicates only through his baton and body language: in a rehearsal he is forced to use words to explain what he wants.

Before we filmed Brian's rehearsals of the “Meistersinger” Prelude, we recorded interviews with him and the players. He discussed his ideas about the piece as a whole, and explained what he hoped to achieve in each section. Then we filmed several rehearsals showing him working with the orchestra, and included the musicians' responses to his requests. We were particularly happy with the players' outspoken comments - about the music, the conductor, and each other.

Generally an orchestra does not like to hear a conductor talk during rehearsals. The momentum of an orchestra, like that of a locomotive, is hard to bring to a halt. It's difficult for a hundred musicians to interrupt their combined musical involvement and focus on the conductor’s words. Sometimes in a rehearsal, Brian stopped the musicians to correct a mistake, but he often let them continue, knowing that they would play the passage correctly the next time around. If he felt that the orchestra really did need another chance at a thorny passage, or if he wanted to rebalance some of the instruments, he stopped them, described succinctly what he wanted, and had them try it. Often he illustrated what he wanted by singing, and the musicians understood immediately. When he started the orchestra again, we all noted that his gestures conveyed what he had asked for. 

If a conductor feels particularly confident in a rehearsal, and the orchestra has been working very hard, he might take a minute to lighten the atmosphere with a joke or anecdote. But he will never, ever, no matter how sincerely, try to describe in words the mood he thinks the music should achieve. He will keep in mind the story that has made the rounds of conducting classes for half a century: when a celebrated conductor could not achieve what he wanted in a particularly expressive passage, he began to rhapsodize poetically on the composer's ideas about “destiny” and “ultimate human achievement.” After too much of this, a musician in the back of the second violin section stood up and asked, “Maestro - do you want it louder or softer?”

* * * * *

There is a moment in the “Meistersinger Prelude” when the orchestra quiets down, in preparation for a steady rise to the final climax. This is marked by a single ding on the triangle – a clear solo that emerges from a soft orchestral background. In our filmed interview the triangle player described the tension he felt as he waited eight or ten minutes for this crucial entry. At last the moment arrived and he produced a perfect, bell-like sound. He showed no emotion, but after the cameras left him he grinned, and his neighbors in the brass section gave him a big thumbs up. I wish we had caught that. In many screenings of the finished film the audience often laughs at this place, not necessarily because it’s amusing but because of a kind of nervous relief they share with the triangle player.

Here is a selection of statements made by Brian Priestman and the players of the Denver Symphony, in “THE SECRET LIFE OF AN ORCHESTRA,” my 1975 film of Wagner's “Prelude to Die Meistersinger.”

“THE SECRET LIFE OF AN ORCHESTRA”

Transcript - Selections

NARRATOR: Every rehearsal is a performance and every performance is a rehearsal for a better performance next time.

PRIESTMAN: (voice-over) It’s very difficult to start off that music in exactly the right tempo for the march that is going to come and to make it perfectly clear to the orchestra as to what the beat is and how the music is moving forward.

VIOLIN: What we want is a very strong rhythmic beat.

VIOLIN: No flamboyance. We’ll do that.

BRIAN PRIESTMAN: Fine. We have to be able to hear it across now from cellos across to the winds with the...the rhythm clicks very well with (sings).

CELLO: The most ideal conductor would be the one who can really do everything with his hands.

CELLO: If he told everybody how to play every little phrase, the rehearsal would last days for a single piece.

CELLO: If he just talks at us, it’s not enough because we don’t know what he’s going to actually do when he has to finally do it.

VIOLIN: I do feel that perhaps it’s not possible to show everything with the beat and this is why there must be verbal discussion in a rehearsal so that the conductor can convey his wishes.

BASS: Most of the time the conductors just give them a little quiet indication of what you want, and if you really know your stuff, they’ll pick it up.

 PRIESTMAN: It’s forte in the flute. You should be forte in the clarinet part too, can you...can you get that in there? Because there needs to be just a little more clarinet to balance in there so that she also, so that she hears you.

FLUTE: Playing in tune with the clarinet, is the first thing one has to worry about. Usually the pitch is pretty good and if it isn’t then we work that out. If it turns out that we weren’t close in pitch, then we discuss it, and then we try and compromise. That’s the best thing to do, compromise. There isn’t any one person who is right.

CLARINET: No, I don't think there's such a thing as being right.

FRENCH HORN: The more a person studies and tries and works on pitch the more thin skinned that person could become.

CLARINET: Some people in the orchestra don’t tune at all. You know, they play on instruments tuned at the factory.

PRIESTMAN: And the tremolo now.

TIMPANI: It’s only two notes, G-natural, C-natural. That’s all there is. I get a lot of mileage out of those two bloody notes, you know?

TROMBONE: I think the problem for a brass player is one of pacing oneself. You can’t just shoot all the cannons in the first sixteen bars of this piece.

TROMBONE: Well, I’m sure for most string players this is a very boring piece. For a brass player it’s not.

VIOLA: I don’t care if my own viola isn’t heard. I just like being a part of that whole big total sound.

VIOLIN: It’s like asking a 155 millimeter cannon to reduce the charge and what’s the point?

TROMBONE: That entrance brings back the whole hero theme of this, you know the Meistersingers with their robes and the pageantry

FRENCH HORN: You have to know when to carry the ball and when to block. There are some sections in the Meistersinger where you’re given the ball and say go. Go get it.

PRIESTMAN: Bill, I see you poised. I see you poised with your triangle, and then I hardly hear it at all.

PRIESTMAN: I suppose it’s the most magical triangle stroke in all music. To stand up in your place and with the utmost delicatesse strike one note, piano, on your triangle.

TRIANGLE: After many hundreds of bars rest, I have one note. Even though it’s one triangle it’s a beauty. And I would imagine if I would miss that one note I would be fired.

PRIESTMAN: It’s the spot of glue that really holds everything together at this point, that triangle stroke.

TRIANGLE: I know that’s an important note and I doubt if I’ll ever miss it. I doubt if I’ll ever miss that note. I might miss something else, but not that one.

PRIESTMAN: Now can we put together the two outsides. The bass of the texture and the top of the texture please. Figure eighteen. Espressivo. Feel it. Feel the line. Long line. Just the upbeat into the tempo primo. The upbeat is the tempo primo. But you’ve got a chance, the seconds here, all right? Three, four. And one....

FLUTE: Well, sometimes I think rehearsal is, you know I wish I weren’t here doing this. I have a piece that I find easy, you know whole notes and half notes, my goodness, you know, like I tend to daydream a lot.

VIOLA: The fact that we’ve played it so many times means that you kind of have to work a little bit harder each time you play it.

VIOLIN: Well, it means coming in each morning and of course doing your best regardless of how you feel.

CLARINET: The job is entirely too difficult. It requires entirely too much concentration, too much effort, not to want to do it well.

VIOLIN: It takes a bit of character. Strength of character.

VIOLA: If you get caught up in this ho-hum attitude, here we go again, you can get your head handed to you by a conductor.

PRIESTMAN: As we get to the tie now, in the second bar of figure three, can we come off it just a little earlier please? (SINGS)

FLUTE: Sometimes the conductor can instill that vitality, that excitement, that’s necessary, and make you do something that maybe you didn’t feel like doing in the first place. And then it’s twice as good.

PRIESTMAN: Seconds, the second violins - really you can let your hair down here you know. You can really let it go...with the firsts. What? Bald is beautiful, I know.

2nd VIOLIN: We have a lot of people in this orchestra who feel that playing in the second violin is below playing in the first violin.

1st VIOLIN: Well, it’s nice to have melody. I know the poor second violins always feel left out, occasionally I think of them when I’m playing the melody and they’re not.

2nd VIOLIN: I think sometimes the second violin can be a little dullsville.

2nd VIOLIN: I do like being a second. In fact I enjoy it much more than playing first violin. Whatever we play, we hear the inner voices as well and to me this is much more fun. But we feel that there are many people in the first violin section, not all of them by any means, but there are many who have no awareness of what’s going on around them, and even if they do, they just go their merry way anyway.

1st VIOLIN: The prima-donna type just can’t help but stick out like a sore thumb. How can they forget that they are a part of a group that has to sound as a unit?

PRIESTMAN: Broad, broad line (voice-over) Oh yes, it is an enormous exhilaration conducting the end.

PRIESTMAN: And now all of us please. Just backing up a little so we can get in the triangle stroke again. Two bars before eighteen. Three, four...

BASSOON: You have this whole orchestra around you, all the heavy breaths and the entire orchestra playing and building up. It feels good to be part of it.

BASS: Oh, it’s phenomenal. You get...you get a sense of triumph if you’ve made it without faltering.

PRIESTMAN: And it’s a crescendo.

VIOLIN: Those are the gravy times. And I enjoy them.

VIOLA: It happens sometimes and it’s just beautiful when it does.

PICCOLO: It’s just there. It really is just there.

BASS: Well, I’ve been in it a long time and I wouldn’t give it up for anything in the world.

VIOLA: It’s one of those moments when I’m very happy I’m a symphony musician.

VIOLIN: (sings) I feel like dragging that out and saying hey baby, I got it now, just relax.

Filmmaking #2 - Conductor Stories

In 1973, in preparation for my documentary, “Bolero,” I spent time observing the Los Angeles Philharmonic in rehearsal at the Hollywood Bowl. It was led by guest conductor James Levine, and featured Beverly Sills singing arias from Verdi's “La Traviata.” Levine, just twenty-nine years old, had already made a strong impression on the music world with his brilliant musicianship, his energy and self-confidence. He must have known that this concert with Beverly Sills was a kind of tryout for the next step up the ladder.

But things were not going well. In this pleasant outdoor theater, the orchestra had become too relaxed. They were not playing together, and Sills was unable to fit herself into their ragged rhythms. She kept looking to Levine for help, but though he was gesturing forcefully, he was unable to establish musical order. Realizing that a frustrated star soprano was not going to be good news for him, he put down his baton. Gradually the orchestra stopped, though a few straggling winds insisted on playing to the ends of their phrases.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Levine said evenly. “You know and I know that this isn't working. Some of you are following me, more or less, some are following Beverly. I'll tell you what. Let's try it once with everyone following me, no matter what happens. If I can't keep you and Beverly together, let it be my fault. Let me be the one to blame.” The orchestra remained silent. Sills raised an eyebrow. Levine started again, and this time the orchestra stayed with him. If Sills changed the tempo in places, they continued to follow Levine and let him bring her along. The orchestra had accepted the presence of a professional on the podium.

This experience brought home to me again that to succeed, conductors need more than fine musicianship and a flawless ear. They must project a powerful aura of leadership, a sense of confident authority. Scherchen combined visionary ideas about music with a commanding presence. He persuaded orchestras to give him what he asked for, and they rewarded him with great performances.

Some conductors, after years of experience, become practical at solving problems. When I told Valery Gergiev I had always had trouble hearing the second wind players - flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon, he replied, “Why didn't you ask them to play louder?”

Ultimately, communication between conductor and orchestra must remain a mystery. Here's a statement from a 2009 interview with Robert Mann, the founding first violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet. He describes a period he spent in the violin section of the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell.

“Certain conductors have an inner mixture of intuition and brain power. They can’t truly explain it in words, but they are somehow able to elicit from the least important person in the orchestra a sense of forward movement in the music, whether it be growing, or receding, or intensifying, or involving a certain kind of melodic nuance. They are able somehow, in their gestures, to translate that into something the musicians will understand and re-create in their playing. There are lots of conductors, but very few can really illuminate the score. George Szell was one of them.”

Szell was a great conductor, but he was also a practiced tyrant. It was said that he made a violinist return his new car and use the money to buy a better violin bow. Once, passing another musician on a stairway, Szell turned and said over his shoulder, “By the way, you’re fired.”

Today, with the growth of musicians' unions, conductors have learned to be more collaborative. Not too long ago, however, I witnessed an event that could have happened in the Szell era. During a rehearsal of a major American orchestra, one of the double bass players continued making the same mistake. The conductor left the podium, walked brusquely through the orchestra, past the horns and trombones, and stopped in front of one of the bass players. Shaking his finger at him, the conductor demanded to know why he could not play the passage correctly. The bass player had the sense not to say anything; he just stared back at the conductor. The orchestra looked grim; those near the awful scene turned away. When the conductor had expended his fury he returned to the podium and the rehearsal continued. It was clear that the maestro had forfeited whatever sense of common purpose he might have developed with the orchestra. Two years later, when his contract was up, he was gone.

Sometimes a conductor is so beloved that the musicians accept his uncontrollable demons. During a rehearsal, Arturo Toscanini was furious with a bassoonist, and began screaming at him in Italian. At the boiling point, Toscanini stormed off the podium and headed for the exit. As he reached the door the bassoonist yelled at him, “Fuck you, Maestro.” Toscanini shouted back, “It's too late to apologize,” and left.

Finally - a contrast in styles. Some years ago The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra from Venezuela played a program in Carnegie Hall, shared by the conductors Gustavo Dudamel and Simon Rattle. Dudamel, barely 30 years old, began with a performance of Bartók's “Concerto for Orchestra,” a virtuoso piece that shows off all the instruments in solos and in groups. Dudamel explored every facet of the music with a dynamism that was just short of wild. The young players were super-excited, almost swaying off their chairs. Under Dudamel the piece became a concerto for adrenaline. As the ending exploded in the hall, the audience was on its feet, shouting and clapping, overwhelmed by the student orchestra and its fiery young conductor.

After intermission Simon Rattle, Principal Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, came onstage to conduct the Shostakovich Symphony No. 10. Rattle, a tall man then in his mid-fifties, with a prominent mop of white hair, stood quietly on the podium. He looked around at the young players, establishing eye contact with each one of them. As he quietly raised his arms, the players put their instruments at ready, leaning slightly towards him. They shared a breathless moment of anticipation - we felt it in the hall - and Rattle started the symphony. He and the musicians, and the audience, dug into the music together.

Filmmaking #1 - Bolero

The story is told that in the 1960's when Bill Cosell, of WGBH in Boston, was asked to direct broadcasts of Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts, his first big problem was to find camera operators who knew something about music. Almost none of the ones at hand could identify the instruments. When Bill called for a shot of the oboe, the response was just as likely to be a view of the clarinet, and he would yell, “Not that black instrument, the other black instrument!” or, “The bald headed guy with glasses.” So Bill made the rounds of television studios, and, tiptoeing up behind the cameramen, who were setting up for a soap opera or a news broadcast, he whispered, “Do you like jazz?” or, “Ever play an instrument in high school?” When he got even a partially positive response, he hired the cameraman away to join his team.

The style of broadcasting orchestral concerts in the 1960's consisted of placing a single camera in the center of the concert hall, focusing it on a wide shot of the orchestra and leaving it alone. Set up in the best seat in the house, the camera operator had very little to do, since the picture never changed. He could have brought along something to read. 

Lacking any kind of visual variety, this technique stifled all sense of musical flow, and the audiences at home were soon changing the channel. After many conferences and meetings, the broadcasters proudly announced their remedy. They would overlay the orchestra with shots of nature - flowers, tidal beaches, and small families of deer grazing in slow motion. They tried to match this beautiful art work with the changing moods of the music, but the results were laughable. One reviewer wrote that the concerts became advertisements for women's underwear.

But though the broadcasters failed, they were made to realize the problem: in television and film, the battle between seeing and hearing is always won by the eye. The most powerful music of the great composers recedes into the background when played behind visual images. Cosell and his crew recognized this. Their first improvement was to shake loose from the static unmoving cameras and follow the thematic progress of the music, showing one prominent instrument and group after another. But audiences still watched more than they listened. 

How, then, could we strengthen a viewer’s attention to the music? One answer occurred to me - enlist the musicians themselves.

While I was Associate Conductor of the Denver Symphony, I noticed how the local sports fans loved their heroes on the Broncos football team. They would recognize them on the street during the week, and grab a handshake: “Hiya – you were great last Sunday – let’s go get ’em.” The football players seemed to like these encounters as much as the fans. Could concertgoers develop a friendly feeling for individual orchestra musicians, until now faceless in a mass of black suits and skirts? Could one learn to root for the second oboe player or a guy in the middle of the violin section?

About this time, in 1972, I had received my promised grant to make a documentary about the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta performing Ravel's “Bolero.” In addition to shooting the performance, my co-producer Bill Fertik and I were given permission to film the players getting ready backstage, and rehearsing with Mehta. The budget, barely totaling $75,000, was shared by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; the latter held back their final OK in Washington right up to the day of the shoot, when our cameras were set up and the orchestra was already arriving at the hall. 

How could I get the players to participate? Would they be willing to talk on camera? I was surprised - four or five said yes right away, including the all-important flutist who is the first to play Ravel's repeated melody. To make the musicians as comfortable as possible, we avoided interviews at first, and stayed back to let them get used to our cameras and lights. We filmed them in groups - unpacking, assembling their instruments, and warming up. Then, we gradually moved in for close-ups, connecting faces with fingers as they practiced their phrases from “Bolero.” We felt like a team from the National Geographic, getting closer and closer to the animals in their natural habitat. 

We were pleased to discover that our rare creatures relaxed quickly. They were performers, after all. They talked easily to the camera about their instruments, about their roles in “Bolero,” and about playing for Zubin Mehta. Each of them was charming and informative in a distinctive way. I suppose they were glad that someone had finally singled them out. The flutist described the pressure she felt at the beginning, playing the solo melody with only a quiet, rhythmic snare drum to accompany her. A bass player assured us with a wink that coming to a rehearsal helped him forget about arguing with his wife. The bassoonist admitted that his solo was in such a high register that it always made him anxious. Then he played it perfectly for the camera and said winningly, “See how easy it is when I'm all by myself?” 

Zubin Mehta had been thrilling Los Angeles audiences since he arrived as Music Director in 1962 at the age of twenty-six. Now, a decade or so later, his musicianship and exciting intensity clearly continued to captivate the orchestra, and he projected a feeling of enthusiastic collegiality with them - a very satisfactory partnership. This extended into the promotional campaign for the orchestra. Huge photographs of the handsome new Music Director, in his perfectly fitting Nehru jacket, lined the walls of the lobby, and small likenesses were distributed everywhere. I wondered if Scherchen had ever achieved this kind of popularity, or even wanted it. Respect for his success in making musicians play well was his reward.

On camera, Mehta described his job in “Bolero:” “The conductor must keep the tempo absolutely steady, so that the gradual buildup can have the greatest effect. We play this piece hundreds of times,” he added. “After this project is over, I never want to see Bolero again!” This kind of easy joking from a major maestro was undoubtedly new for concertgoers. 

During the rehearsal, and in the performance, which we photographed without an audience, we started with the solo passages of the musicians we had met, and built up the orchestra to larger and larger groups, finishing with the entire orchestra at the end. We waited for the climax to show Mehta, dramatically back-lit, filmed by a camera directly in front of him. He embodied the music in every gesture and facial expression.

This new technique of using the musicians to help bring the audience closer to performances has since been adopted by most directors. But we still realize that filmed performances can never substitute for live concerts - or sound recordings - the visual element will always be distracting. No director will ever solve this problem, especially in an era that demands quick cuts from short takes, and ever-smaller screens on handheld devices. And “Bolero” was a one-shot. Most music consists of a rich and complicated texture, full of harmony and color that cannot be embodied in a single instrument, the way a repeated theme stands apart from the accompaniment throughout "Bolero." Focusing the camera on whoever is playing a leading melody, is like the student conductor who is hearing only one line in an interwoven musical fabric. 

In subsequent films I tried to further strengthen the role of musicians as spokespersons for the music. I did not ask them to analyze or explain, but to step back from their professional activity and allow us to get to know them as individual personalities. I learned how to help them become more and more important in drawing the listener into the music. 

The film of “Bolero” won an Academy Award in 1973. I wish Scherchen had been there to receive it with me. He had died in Florence in 1966.

Looking Back #5

At one point during my stay with Scherchen he accepted a post as “orchestra trainer” with the Herford Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie in northern Germany. Herford is a gray town, hazy and cold; from November to March the sun never rises above eye level. The people are said to be unemotional, without affect - gray. The food was the same -– gray.

Scherchen agreed to work with the orchestra a week or so at a time, during four or five visits in the winter of 1959-60. His sessions included rehearsing and performing as well as advising the management on ways to expand the repertory, improve rehearsal conditions, and identify certain players for dismissal.

He installed me as orchestral pianist, which worried me and excited me at the same time. The orchestra found me a good Steinway to practice on - in the show window of a piano store, which could be mine from 5-7 A.M. every day except Sunday.

The real test for me was to play in the Bartók, “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” – in which the piano is considered one of the strings. Much of the part was manageable, but there were several off-beat entrances after long waits - not hard to play but difficult to coordinate with the orchestra. For the listener, it comes out of nowhere, a sudden outburst of accented octave scales synchronized with mallet strokes on a woodblock. I sat there, counting bars until the music shifted gears - and wham! Scherchen cued me to play. In the first rehearsal I botched the entrance several times - very embarrassing, especially since the orchestra had to repeat it until I got it right. The percussion player hit the woodblock harder and harder each time, and barely acknowledged me during the days before the performance. The concert was terrifying but satisfactory - as I choose to remember it these many years later. I was glad to get out of that town, back to Gravesano and the Italian-Swiss sunshine.

There I continued working with Scherchen on scores, and traveling with him to his concerts. In addition to the first Bach Brandenburg, I learned the Beethoven First Symphony and the Eroica, the Haydn Symphony No.104, the Wagner Tannhäuser overture, and Liszt’s “Les Préludes,” plus portions of a wide range of contemporary works that Scherchen was conducting.

* * * *

After two years of this intense apprenticeship, I began to feel it was time to go home. My person-to-person telephone calls were mounting from weekly to sometimes two a day. Scherchen agreed that he had done all he could to prepare me. I don't remember any sad parting scenes with him - life had simply turned a corner, an experience he was more used to than I was. I knew he had plans for his first American visit in a few months, so ours was a literal “auf Wiedersehen,” with my heartfelt thanks, and a warm embrace.

The other students and I wished each other well, and that was that. We had worked and lived closely with one another in the shared intensity of our experience with Scherchen, but lately our paths seemed to be heading in different directions. 

Back in America, I found a regular job from which I could look for conducting opportunities. Channel 13, the public broadcasting station in New York City, needed an assistant in the music department and took me on. My principal advantage there was that I could read music and spell composers’ names. I changed the Cz to Tch in Tchaikovsky, and insisted the z in Mozart be pronounced the way he heard it: Motsart, not Moe-zart. I also helped plan studio recitals and chamber music programs for broadcast, and scheduled reruns of orchestral concerts acquired from stations in Boston, Chicago, and others around the country. This was my introduction to the challenge of putting music on film.

I began to find jobs as an assistant conductor with orchestras around the country. My duties included conducting concerts for young people, sometimes in small school auditoriums at 8 in the morning, sometimes in big concert halls for 1500 students. They were supervised by teachers walking up and down the aisles during the music, making more noise than the restless kids. To help keep them - and the orchestra - attentive, I developed a character to perform magic tricks during my introductory talks. I was The Great Alcantara, Master of Musical Magic. On one occasion, I asked the concert master to lend me his priceless Stradivarius violin: I would make it disappear and then come back to life. Whereupon I smashed it to bits on the floor of the stage, right in front of his chair! Only the concert master and I knew that the violin he had handed me was an old piece of junk. The orchestra gasped in horror - one or two almost fell off their chairs. The players were even more upset at being duped when I revealed the real Strad under a cloth on my music stand, and returned it to the concert master. The kids, of course, whooped and hollered.  This was not their idea of a classical music concert.

The students came from a wide range of schools, from elementary to high school. The teacher of one girls' school I visited before a concert introduced me to her uniformed class by saying, “I know you don't really like symphony music, but many of your parents contribute to the orchestra, so please be polite to Mr. Miller.”

By contrast, after a concert in a city school, a dozen or so junior-high kids clustered around me in lively conversation. One young boy hovered in the back, saying nothing, staring down at his shoes. During a pause in the hubbub, he looked up at me. “That was good music,” he said, evenly. The conversation stopped. No one moved. I thanked him and the rest of the group, and started to leave. The teacher met me at the door, and put her hand on my arm. “That was the first word any of us have heard him say for two months,” she said.

I loved the thank-you letters the teachers would make the kids write. One said, “My favorite instrument was the violin cello the flute the trumpet the drums the oboe and the conductor.” Another said, “I wish we could be busy in school like those players are.” A classic response, which I have since heard from others: “Beethoven is music that is better than it sounds.”

I had other opportunities to conduct during that period - the Mahler 1st Symphony in Denver, the entire “Hansel and Gretel” opera in Baltimore, the Prokofiev “Suite from Romeo and Juliet” in Minneapolis. I also worked with choruses in New York and Scranton, Pennsylvania.

But I ran into difficulties. Somehow, when standing in front of real players, I lost the confidence I had developed while working with Scherchen.  I had trouble adjusting to the sound coming at me from a huge semicircle  - not from the music in my head in front of Scherchen and our small group of students. I studied hard and always came to rehearsals well prepared, but things did not improve. I hesitated, became unsure - and the musicians saw their chance. They were not rebellious or nasty; they just gradually gave up on me. They sat back, played the notes, accepted my requests, but were patently not all there. They let me be fiery and intense, but their performances were lackluster. The distance between us grew. I would become flustered and make mistakes, forgetting an entrance or cuing the wrong instrument. I began to lose concentration, which affected my ability to hear the music.  Nothing was more painful than the musicians’ reactions – condescending little smiles that passed among them, sighs of resignation: “I guess we have to put up with this.” But in spite of these difficulties, I kept going; I had occasional successes, and I loved the music.

Sometime in 1973, the National Endowment for the Arts, who had made inquiries at Channel 13, asked me to help identify a producer/director who knew both music and filmmaking.  They wanted to fund a pilot film for their new Media Arts department. I asked, "Why risk all the money on one person?  There are several filmmakers with strong musical backgrounds that I could recommend. Why not give each one a portion of the money to make a ten- or twelve- minute film essay. The results would provide you with a range of approaches from which to choose the direction you would like to go. Two weeks later they called me. “You know your idea for not spending all the money on one project but spreading it around? Well, we're not going to do that. We 're going to stick to our original plan and give it all to one person - and that person is you.”

The grant sent me first to London for several weeks to study music filmmaking at the famous BBC studios.  Then I went to observe the Los Angeles Philharmonic rehearse and perform standard symphonic works and popular favorites at the Hollywood Bowl.  At the end of this  period, I was to write a treatment for a film. I proposed a performance-documentary on Ravel's “Bolero” and the idea was accepted.

I thought of calling Scherchen to tell him that I was going to try and use what he had taught me in a different kind of music-making, but I decided to wait until the film was made.

Looking Back #4

Hermann Scherchen was never interested in teaching us baton technique. He insisted that if we concentrated intensely and conducted what we were hearing inside, we could not fail to produce gestures that would show the orchestra how to play.

If you have ever seen a great conductor from the front, you will observe, in addition to clear physical gestures, a flow of facial expressions that inexplicably convey the conductor's deep image of the music. If you attend a performance in a concert hall with seats facing the conductor from behind the orchestra, the players won't show you anything. But a good conductor, and, if you are lucky, a great one, will unconsciously enact the music for the players, and show in his face, as well as in his more down-to-earth body movements, how he wants the music to take life. One cannot analyze this almost tribal communication, so rich and unfailingly understood. A great mystery of orchestral playing is that musicians do respond, and perform what they see.

Since conductors differ in their physical stature, and in their movements on the podium, the quality of sound produced by an orchestra can differ from conductor to conductor, even when they are performing the same piece. I once attended a conducting class in which five students of varying height and weight - and self-possession - mounted the podium, readied the orchestra, and gave a downbeat for the opening chord of the same symphony - one chord - that is all. All the downbeats were different in a hundred ways: in strength, in freedom of motion, in the amount of the body used, in the conductor's attitude of commanding versus inviting the orchestra to play - and in many more physical characteristics. The conductors did not speak. They simply gave the downbeat. In playing that one chord the orchestra responded with five completely different qualities of sound - surprising, but clear to everyone.

Sometimes orchestral musicians delight in distracting an inexperienced conductor, to relieve the routine of rehearsals and to find out if he really knows the score. They will look around in studied inattention, chatter to each other, complain about the lighting, and ask the conductor foolish questions about "unclear" notations in their music. With a new guest conductor, they may even play wrong notes on purpose to see if he hears the mistakes. Most important to them, they want to see if the conductor can communicate a compelling image of the music from his first downbeat to the final chords. If he doesn't, if he stops the players for unimportant errors that will correct themselves the next time through, if he doesn't hear the mistakes, or if he simply talks too much, they will go after him.

Strangely enough, these are challenges they hope to lose. At heart, the musicians do not want to master the conductor; they want to be won over. Playing well is what they have studied all their lives. It is what they long for, season after grueling season - to be respected, and yet to be compelled to play beautifully together.

And so I continued, striving to hear the music ever more vividly, hoping that the inner image would make its way to my arms and hands – and face. 

I stayed with Hermann Scherchen for two years, and during that time became better and better at concentrating and hearing the music, without the concrete sounds of an orchestra – conducting Scherchen and the other students, who "listened" and watched together. We studied each other's scores, the better to participate in the lessons. We also began to conduct for each other away from Scherchen, taking advantage of the opportunity to cover large sections or whole movements without his interruptions. We would unhesitatingly report weak spots in each other's gestures, and almost always agreed whether the one who was conducting was hearing many lines or only one. These were eerie, yet intensely musical experiences.

Scherchen's lessons usually took place at home in the quiet of his Gravesano studio, or in his private concert hall dressing rooms on the road. As he was guest-conducting a good deal, he took us with him from city to city, and gave us lessons in every kind of venue. He continually presented us with distractions to overcome. We had lessons in hotel lobbies, in train-station waiting rooms, and once on a balcony overlooking a crowded Sunday park in a Berlin suburb - very entertaining to the afternoon strollers. In a restaurant after a recording session in Vienna, I was settling into my schnitzel, when Scherchen looked over at me and commanded, "Beethoven!" I folded my napkin and stood up, quite accustomed to this by now. It took only a moment to blank out the noisy diners, the clinking glasses, and the waiters' shouts, before I heard the opening chords of the Eroica Symphony crash silently through my brain at the command of my downbeat. I continued through the entire first movement of this most dramatic work. No one in the restaurant seemed shocked or embarrassed. They were startled at first - all that intense waving - but they soon settled down to watch quietly. For reasons I still don't understand, they never seemed to take my "performance" as a trick, or as Scherchen showing off his trained animals. Maybe the fact that our group watched me with such focus communicated something to them. When it was over there was no applause, just a few smiles, perhaps to show how relieved they were that I had come through unscathed. Scherchen said he would save his comments for the next day, and invited us to order dessert.

Hermann Scherchen

His criticisms were always illuminating. He indicated where I had not been not clear, and remembered exactly where I had lost concentration or cued the wrong instrument. Corrections began with singing, then conducting. He would discuss the structure of our scores in detail, showing us where we needed to give particular attention to achieve emphasis or gradual transition, and others where the orchestra would best be left alone. He wanted us to understand the difference between a Haydn forte and one by Beethoven, how to determine dynamics and tempo in Bach. He was demanding and often impatient, but never harsh. We always felt that he was committed to us - devoted, even.

When we traveled with Scherchen to his concerts in Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland, he introduced us to composers, musicians, managers, and others involved in the musical life of each city. We were included in his meetings and dinners with his family if they were traveling with him. He called us to his hotel room to talk about the history and philosophy of music as he saw it: he had read widely, and connected his music to what he had studied. Composers of every school sent him their scores, and he went over many of them with us, especially those from his upcoming concerts. He knew the music of composers from Bach and Handel, through the nineteenth century, to the most difficult music of our own time. He kept sharpening our ears, teaching us to sing difficult passages. We loved competing with each other to fill in the twelfth note of a tone row, when he had sung us the first eleven. 

And we did a lot of tasks for him, running errands at home and on the road. We made phone calls, carried his scores - I even washed his back after several concerts. It was like being apprenticed to Hans Sachs.

Once, while he and his family went on ahead by plane, I drove his old Citroen - an official sedan familiar from World War II newsreels - through Communist East Germany from Hanover to Berlin, explaining myself to skeptical guards at numerous military check points. On another occasion, he left rehearsals at La Scala, in Milan, and returned to Gravesano in anger. I was summoned to the opera's elaborately furnished board room, with its gilded ceiling and velvet arm chairs, to face the wrath of the theater director and a bunch of assistants whom Scherchen had apparently insulted. The director insisted that I get Scherchen to return and apologize. I understood his Italian, and could speak a little, but mostly I responded with an assortment of vague gestures and nods. I didn’t know exactly what the problem was, but I telephoned Scherchen, and he had cooled off enough to return. I'm sure he never apologized.

Looking Back #3

Hermann Scherchen, one of the great conductors of the day, had now tested me enough to have decided I was worth a try at teaching me how to conduct an orchestra.

But there was to be no orchestra. Scherchen's goal was for his students to hear the music internally with a strength that could resist all distraction. Only then would they feel secure enough to stand in front of a hundred wary musicians, and convince them to give their all to yet another conductor who thinks he knows how the music should go - music they may have already played dozens of times.

After Scherchen's last rehearsal in Geneva, with the concert coming up that night, the three other students and I gathered in his dressing room. He took a chair and placed me a few paces in front of him. “Now,” he said. “Sing the opening of the Brandenburg Number 1, starting with the first violins.” A few orchestra members were still talking in their dressing room next door. Some were practicing, others slamming their instrument cases shut, walking by the open door, laughing, saying goodbye. 

I hesitated. “Go on, go on.” Scherchen leaned toward me. I inclined my head at the door, expecting someone to close it. “Think only Bach,” he said. “Please – begin.” I started again, trying to block out the noise, but didn’t get very far. He stood up. “Go back to Gravesano, he said. Turn on a radio. Sing Bach. Ignore the radio.” He closed his leather bag and we followed him out into the street. One of the students reassured me: “Don't worry. He is spending time with you.”

Scherchen's concert that night was a big success. No more starting and stopping - a live performance, full of electricity. The orchestra was with him every measure. 

Back in Gravesano, I continued singing the Bach - outdoors, with mule driven carts rattling by, the local churches sounding their uncoordinated quarter-hours – wherever I could find commotion to ignore. I got better at it, even when the villagers sang their own songs back at me, grinning as they passed.

By now, I would occasionally meet with the other students, for a meal, a walk, or a talk in our rooms. We were getting to know each other a little. The Chilean was from an aristocratic family; he affected a studied regal bearing. He had brought his wife with him to Gravesano. She was a shy woman, especially in the presence of her husband. The Italian was tall and looked underfed, with deep circles under his eyes. He had a very friendly wife, too friendly at times, and a two-year-old son, whom they included when they invited us to dinner, setting him on a potty next to the table. He punctuated our conversation with steady grunts, smiling when his parents applauded his successful efforts. The older American woman, a very good violist, who acted as Scherchen’s part time secretary to pay for her conducting lessons, did not usually join our get-togethers. We never saw the German pianist either, or the studio technician he was assigned to help. 

We were always kind and encouraging to each other. There seemed to be no competition among us – we felt we were a part of a special team, novices devoted to the word. Each of us had been assigned a score and from listening to one another sing, we began to recognize whenever one of us achieved true concentration.

After a week or so back from Geneva, when I was beginning to wonder if there was anything to life with Scherchen but singing, we received word to come to his studio. Early dusk had settled on the hills. It was chilly October. I had now been in Gravesano, except for the trip to Geneva, for three months.

In the studio, all the equipment had been shoved against the wall. Scherchen sat in the center. He asked me to stand facing him, a few paces away. The other students spread out behind him, suggesting a small orchestra.

“Please begin,” he said. Begin what, I wondered - I guessed he meant singing, since it was all I ever did. So I began. After half a minute or so, he stopped me: “You are singing the notes. Sing music, please.” I started again, with what I thought was more phrasing. “That is better. Continue.” Then he stopped me again. “You have sung the first violin part in these measures. What is the viola doing at the point where I stopped you?” I blanched. I decided to go back to the beginning of the piece, and sang rapidly in my head, jumping back and forth between the violin and the viola lines. When I got to the point where Scherchen had stopped me, I sang the viola part out loud. Scherchen was pleased, but I thought to myself: Scherchen could have asked me to sing any instrumental part in the orchestra - strings, winds, horns - and he would have heard if I was right. While I sang the one line, he apparently was hearing everything else as well.

To hear a whole score is very difficult. Some musicians, I think, must be born with the ability, and these are names everyone comes to know; others learn it gradually. I never fully mastered it. But I could come close. At a live concert I could hear almost everything, but when, later, I finally stood in front of an orchestra, it became much more difficult. 

Finally, on a rainy day in November, Scherchen decided it was time to see me conduct. He asked for the beginning of the Bach. I looked around to see if someone was going to play the music on the piano, or if I was to conduct to a recording. “Please,” he said. “I asked you to begin.” No accompaniment, no sound from anywhere. “Hear the music in your ear, and show us how to play.”

I started but stopped awkwardly, smiling in embarrassment. Scherchen - and the students - did not find it funny. I began again. I beat time, without a baton, as the music went by in my head. Scherchen stopped me again. “Thank you, Mr. Metronome, my West Point cadet, but little children can wave 1-2-3-4. Listen to the music in your head, and show me with your hands that you want me to play what you hear - that it is impossible to play it any other way. Begin.” I started. This time he let me go on for several pages before he stopped me. Alter a long, fearful silence, he stood up. “You have begun,” he said. He looked at the other students, shook my hand, and left. Later they told me they had started to see the music in my hands and in my look.